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TERRIT0RY REPORT: ITALY Marco Accordi Rickards, Director of the Italian Video Games Developer Conference
Fabrizio Vagliasindi, Head of Marketing, Black Bean Games
Andrea Colombo, Head of Europe Mediterranean region, Atari
perform much better in other European countries, are weaker here. And this affects the sales of mass-market products in terms of potential. Buyers are not getting the right mix of product, and the shelves are not being filled properly. This will be a big area of improvement over the next couple of years.” Although the retail sector is some way off its European rivals, the Italian development community is starting to get the global recognition it deserves. Italian talent can be found at many of the biggest studios worldwide, and the country boasts some top development houses including Ubisoft Studios Milano and Milestone. Last month also saw the opening of the first Italian Video Game Developers conference in Milan. “IVDC ‘08 has had an extraordinary response, it really surpassed our
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In a few years, The Italian development sector has the potential to challenge the rest of Europe. Marco Accordi Rickards, IVDC
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expectations,” comments IVDC director Marco Accordi Rickards, who is also president of the Italian Association of Interactive Multimedia Works (AIOMI). “Over 500 professionals came to Milano for the Conference and we had every single Italian game developer represented, including the biggest like Milestone, Ubisoft Studios Milano and Artematica. The B2B area was crowded by publishers, developers and young talents and the recruitment tables – which were set up by the major software houses – were always busy. “Italy has a lot of potential,” he continues. “We have a reputation of being creative, talented and open minded people – just look at the fashion industry. At IVDC 2008 it’s been clear that Italians are capable of achieving great results in the game development
area: people like Ready at Dawn founder Andrea Pessino, Marco Corbetta at Crytek, Alessandro Bartolucci at Infinity Ward, Angelo Pesce at EA or Alessandro Monopoli at Codemasters are all living proof of the ‘Italian way’ of doing games. “However, Milestone, Artematica, Raylight, Black Sheep, Twelve and SpinVector are showing that it’s not necessary to go abroad anymore to have success in the industry. I really think this is very important, because the Italian game development sector has the potential to improve and, in a few years, challenge the other European countries.”